No collective goal, no medal for SL – NOCSL President

NOCSL President Suresh Subramaniam (2nd from right) speaking to the media yesterday. Also in the picture from left, Chandana Liyanage (Assistant Secretary General NOCSL), Maxwell de Silva (General Secretary NOCSL) and Gamini Jayasinghe (Chef de Mission of Sri Lanka Olympic team)

By Shehan Daniel reporting from Tokyo, Japan

A disconnect between the individual sports federations and the National Olympic Committee of Sri Lankan (NOCSL) is stunting the development of national athletes.  

This was the opinion of the NOCSL President Suresh Subramaniam, who also suggested that patience should be exercised when it comes to developing Olympic-level athletes.   

“The success we want to see won’t materialize over four years. It will take a lot longer than that. But if we don’t give this current lot a chance to compete in the Olympics, how can we build the next generation?” asked the NOCSL President.   

“The NOC has done everything it can to support the athletes. (Having participated in the Olympics) They now know that to win a medal, you can’t just talk. You have to perform. The NOCSL itself has discussed what we need to do to facilitate the improvement of our athletes,” he added.   

And while the NOCSL could facilitate the programmes to help athletes improve, Subramaniam said there needs to be a collective effort among many stakeholders if Sri Lanka is to have another Olympic medal winner.   
“The individual federations can produce champions, but it’s the NOC that makes them medalist,” Subramaniam boldly claimed.   

“The federations cannot do that by themselves. There needs to be a collective effort between the NOCSL, the federations, the Ministry of Sports and the Education Ministry with a common goal in mind.”  

He said the NOCSL was looking at how it could give athletes a more competitive environment ahead of events such as the Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games set to take place in 2022.   

“The NOCSL has discussed that, with the Commonwealth Games and Asian Games scheduled next year, we need to send athletes abroad because they need competition. For example, there was only one athletic competition in Sri Lanka last year. How do you win when you compete just one a year? There needs to be at least ten competitions in the country, and then we can send the athletes overseas,” Subramaniam said.   

“It’s why I believe we won’t see many World Records being broken at this Olympics, because athletes have not been able to compete over the last 18 months. They trained, but there was no competition,” Subramaniam said.   
Six Sri Lankan athletes have taken part at Tokyo 2020, with none of them being able to progress to the next round of their events.   

Asked who bore the responsibility for the uninspiring showing, NOCSL Secretary General Maxwell de Silva said: “When it comes to training and preparing the athletes it’s usually the responsibility of the individual sporting federations. What the NOCSL does is, is connecting them to international competition. If anyone says that we have not come up to international level, then it’s a question that whoever is training and preparing the athlete should answer, and that’s the national federation’s responsibility.”  

He said Sri Lanka were still small fishes in the big ocean of international sport. 

 
“There are 10500 athletes who have come to the Olympics from around the world. And we have just nine, and of that only three of them are direct qualifications. I think that tells you where we are as a country. We need to see how we can have all nine athletes directly qualify next time, or maybe have even 18 athletes qualify directly, and then have the expectation of going to the second round and the semi-finals,” de Silva said.